How would you balance the US budget?

[GePap]

You seem to think I agree with heavy consumer spending, which ios wrong, but then of course I had not said so.

What I don't agree on is valuing investements in the market as something that should be heavily encouraged to the general public. I think savings should be what we need to encourage. Less profitable perhaps but a better foundation for the average person. Well regulated banks could then loan to corporations needing cash for expansion, but at this point what our economy as a whole needs is a secure base of savings, not more money invested.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by DanS


Fundamentally, it is wrong for people to pay no taxes. They would have no investment in making sure their tax dollars are spent correctly, and therefore would have no investment in voting in their own interests. It's a big step to bread and circuses.

You act like the income tax is the only tax.

[Jon Miller]

Hmm, I think I would also give this boost to married people:

They combine their incomes to figure out what range they are in, but their ranges are added together also:
0-80k = 0%
80-280k = 30%
280k+ = 40%

No matter whether you pay taxes or not, you are still faced with having to pay bills/survive in soceity. If you make it unpleasent to do so, you won't survive well.

The problem is that the wealthy are making it very unpleasent for the poor to survive, because they don't know what it is like (I think).

JM

[Aeson]

Originally posted by GePap
What I don't agree on is valuing investements in the market as something that should be heavily encouraged to the general public. I think savings should be what we need to encourage.

Both saving and investment will be encouraged by such a move.

Technically, savings are just a low risk, low reward, form of investment anyways. You give your money to the bank in exchange for the promise of the money returned (either at will or with restrictions), and interest paid in the interim.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
The problem is that the wealthy are making it very unpleasent for the poor to survive, because they don't know what it is like (I think).

No, they just don't care.

(Warning: The following paragraph contains massive generalities about human behavior.)

It's not malicious or negligent uncaring; it's just that the quality of life of poor people is not something that enters their thoughts from day to day. They think about their family, their company, their golf course, etc. Unless they read about poor people in the paper, or see one on the street, their thoughts are simply not going to be on poor people.

While I am not poor, I am by no means wealthy. Consequently, the lives of rich people don't concern me much. I think about going to work everyday, when my next D&D session is going to be, how maddeningly lonely I am, and where the responsibilities of my hypothetical utopia meet the right of humans to exercise their free will.

[rah]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
The problem is that the wealthy are making it very unpleasent for the poor to survive, because they don't know what it is like (I think).
JM

This makes no sense what so ever.

The wealthy are making it unpleasent HOW?
They aren't directly responsible for tax rates or rules.
Just because the want to pay less and even use loopholes to avoid it doesn't make it their responsibility. Government waste and pandering to the voters is what's the problem. The wealthy account for more than 75% of tax revenue. The are also responsible for billions of dollars of charity that goes to the poor. Saying that just by having money makes it upleasent on the poor is just silly.

[Jon Miller]

They don't pay their employees enough, they do business practices that maximize profit at the expensive of employees and customers, they have little regard for working conditions or the environment, I could go on...

JM

[rah]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
They don't pay their employees enough, they do business practices that maximize profit at the expensive of employees and customers, they have little regard for working conditions or the environment, I could go on...

JM

and it would sound just as silly.

It's companies that do that, not individual wealthy people. They're responsible to stock holders. Are you assuming that everyone that holds stock is automatically a wealthy person?

Now if you say that companies can make it unpleasant on the poor, I'd even have to argue that one a bit.

I don't think anyone in our company would be classified as poor.

So I think we're back to it's the Governments problem. Which as I stated before may not be totally the case because some people are lazy and choose to be poor.
I personally don't care if that group is inconvienced.

[Jon Miller]

You will when the revolution comes. And it will if the government doesn't do something to allievate the suffering of the poor.

JM

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
All of the solutions in this thread are pathetic and Darius has proven he is retarded.

So when faced with the choice between taxing the incomes of 1) deservedly rich people whose years of hard work and innovation earned their wealth or 2) entitled brats who didn't lift a finger for one penny of wealth inherited, you choose only the former? Why?

Why do you feel the need to punish people for success? Do you have some sort of chip on your shoulder against rich people?



(This barb is directed at anyone who wants to continue punishing success, not just Wiggy)

[Kidlicious]

Re: How would you balance the US budget?

I wouldn't.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by rah
Which as I stated before may not be totally the case because some people are lazy and choose to be poor.
I personally don't care if that group is inconvienced.

I always find this kind of talk funny because it's always those who are not poor who shuck the responsibility for everything on to the poor no matter whose fault it is, because the poor have no power.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by DanS


Fundamentally, it is wrong for people to pay no taxes. They would have no investment in making sure their tax dollars are spent correctly, and therefore would have no investment in voting in their own interests. It's a big step to bread and circuses.

Once you pay your taxes it's no longer yours.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by GePap
You seem to think I agree with heavy consumer spending, which ios wrong, but then of course I had not said so.

What I don't agree on is valuing investements in the market as something that should be heavily encouraged to the general public. I think savings should be what we need to encourage. Less profitable perhaps but a better foundation for the average person. Well regulated banks could then loan to corporations needing cash for expansion, but at this point what our economy as a whole needs is a secure base of savings, not more money invested.

WTF???

Savings can not exceed investment.

Privatization is incredibly stupid, but think about what you are saying.

[Deity Dude]

Originally posted by Arrian


Yay! Trade wars! Phenomenal idea.

-Arrian

Only to the extent that I do not think it should be America's policy to give away it's entire industrial base to 3rd world countries that promote slave-labor.

Do you want to promote and encourage slave-labor?

Only to the extent that I don't think hard working American's should lose their job because they aren't willing to or can't afford to work for slave-labor wages.

Do you want to work for slave-labor wages?

If there is an industry in the US, or any country for that matter, and the ONLY competitive advantage an importer has is wages, then that is not a competitive advantage that the world should support. Let alone the country that will lose the industry and incur the unemployment.

If a country truly has a competitive advantage, other than taking advantage of it's citizens labor, then I have no problem.

All I said was to put a tariff on products equal to the difference in wages that go into that product.

If you call not encouraging companies to continually leave their homelands in order to go to the cheapest possible wage in the world a "Trade War" (thus giving those countries that legalize slave-labor no incentive to change their ways), I would have to say it would be the most just "War" America could fight.